Fanny Aikin Kortright

Frances Isabella Staveley Berkeley Wood Kortright wrote as Fanny Aikin Kortright and Berkeley Aikin (28 January 1821 – 31 October 1900) was an English governess, anti-suffragist, writer and editor.

Frances Kortright
Issue 1 October 1868
Born	28 January 1821 Southwark
Died	31 October 1900 (1900-11-01) (aged 79) Islington
Pen name	Fanny Aikin Kortright
Occupation	writer and governess
Nationality	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Life

Kortright was born in 1821^[1] in Southwark. She was the last of seventeen children born to Elizabeth (born Aikin) and Nicholas Berk(e)ley Kortright. Her mother was Irish and her father was born in New York but he had spent his career as a Royal Navy officer.^[2] She spent her childhood in Devon, London and St Omer. Her elder sister acted as her governess.^[2]

She was well read. Her father died in 1840 and the family had no income. She took jobs with different families as a governess and she supplemented her income by writing articles for the Family Herald^[2] which by 1855 had a circulation of 300,000.^[3]

Her first novel Anna Sherwood was published in 1857 with the nom de plume of Berkeley Aikin.^[2] Her other novels included Old, Old Story Love and Waiting for the Verdict (which was described as an autobiography).^[4]

In the 1850s her style was popular but by the 1870s her books were not selling well and she had to give up her house where she had taken in boarders. Between 1868 and 1870 she was working at the editor of the Court Suburb Magazine which was aimed at readers in Kensington. In 1869 she published, The True Rights of Woman.^[5] After this she descended into poverty staying at smaller and smaller homes.^[2]

Death

Kortright died in Islington in 1900 where she had been taken into the Mercers' Company almshouse at Whittington College four years before.^[2]

References

1. Archives, The National. "The Discovery Service". discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk. Retrieved 2022-12-25.
2. Morse, Elizabeth J. (2005-05-26). "Kortright, Frances Isabella Staveley Berkeley Wood [pseud. Fanny Aikin Kortright] (1821–1900), author and anti-suffragist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1 (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/77233. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. Cox, Howard; Mowatt, Simon (March 2014). Revolutions from Grub Street: A History of Magazine Publishing in Britain. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-960163-9.
4. Boyd, Belle (1865). Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison. Saunders, Otley, and Company.
5. Kortright, Fanny Aikin (1869). The true rights of woman [by F. Aikin-Kortright]. S.W. Partridge and Company.